


terreno herido

by iimpavid, scarebeast



Series: transmogrification [8]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Gen, M/M, Murder Husbands, On the Run, Psychic Abilities, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:56:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarebeast/pseuds/scarebeast
Summary: Molly gave an interview to Tattle-Crime. It was only a matter of time before Will saw it.





	terreno herido

**Author's Note:**

> If you're new to the universe of transmogrification, we STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU [to read transmogrification from the beginning](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1094898).

**June 6**

The man who owned the dock two days south of Heroica Veracruz had been more than willing to look the other way when they produced several thousand pesos as payment. They could come and go as they pleased.

Will paused on his way to take Holly ashore to read over Hannibal’s shoulder. As soon as they made landfall Hannibal had gotten himself a tablet from somewhere. To the casual observer, it’d be hard to tell Hannibal was utterly delighted at creature comforts like dryland but Will could see the ease in the line of his shoulders and the aura of contentment civilization brought him.

He scrolled through TattleCrime, scrolling through the latest news in vague amusement without giving any one post much attention-- but then he paused over one for just a second. Long enough for Will to catch interest, long enough to see the headline. He wished he hadn't.

"Wait, go back." The need to wrestle the tablet away from Hannibal paralyzed him.

Hannibal, careful to neither seem obliging or reluctant, scrolled back to the post in question-- he didn't need to ask which Will meant-- and tilted the tablet so Will could see it.

_TATTLECRIME EXCLUSIVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH MOLLY GRAHAM_

Seeing Molly in the video’s thumbnail shocked him. That she looked so drawn like she hadn’t been sleeping. That she’d even deign to speak to Freddie Lounds. More significantly, that he hadn't thought about her in weeks. Months. The pseudo-life he and Hannibal were stringing together had consumed him; he felt each individual thread with the sudden awareness of a trapped fly.

On screen, Molly spoke with great restraint; her distaste for Lounds was palpable. Hannibal couldn’t help himself, "Your wife seems to have given you up without much hesitation."

Will ignored him.

The things that Will thought Molly had truly known about him could be counted on one hand. The only thing in their relationship that had been truly special had been her. He had wanted her, desperately, and the satisfying life they might have had together. Watching Walter grow up, living their lives in quiet synchronicity. The tacit possibility that Will might have been comfortable enough that they could someday have a baby together like Molly daydreamt about. People like him didn’t get a chance at contentment all that often--

He replayed the video.

Here and now listening to her talk, not to Freddie but to him, he realized she’d known far more about him that he’d ever meant for her to. Will had tried for her and she’d accepted him without condition.

Will reached over Hannibal to tap at the video, rewinding it to watch it over one more time, one hand on the back of Hannibal’s chair to get closer to the tablet, to the image of Molly on the screen, inadequate and weary. He could feel Hannibal wince beside him, caught sight of his nostrils flaring.

Molly was a force. At once she managed to convey grief, disdain, determination, and loyalty.

To Hannibal, she was awful to behold and hideous in her sincerity.

 _"Do you realize, Ms. Lounds, the amount of damage you do by suggesting that my husband not only might still be alive but might be— he’s nothing like that_ monst—” she stopped herself on the edge of genuine emotion, of rudeness, _“—like that."_

Hannibal wished, desperately, that he could reverse the track of time and hunt Francis Dolarhyde down to punish him more thoroughly for failing to kill Molly and Walter Graham. This one video, not even a full interview, only a few minutes of footage, would set Will's progress back by months if not years. He ground that knowledge between his teeth and it sat bitter and hot on the back of his tongue.

Hannibal's grip on the tablet remained relaxed as they watched the footage _yet again_.

He thought he could tear her apart. Oh, but instead consider this: how lovely it might be to make a Pieta of her and her precious little son, knelt in Baltimore's city center with their eyes burnt out of their skulls, empty sockets unable to perceive anything that was not meant for them.

The video stopped and before Will could reach to tap the "replay" button a third time Hannibal closed the tab.

"Are you feeling well? I imagine that must have been quite distressing for you to see." He didn’t look at him. He first had to gather his rage back into himself one painstaking inch at a time. A dozen heartbeats passed in silence between them.

"Will?"

Will stood stock still at the arm of Hannibal's chair, still leaning a bit in as if he hadn't caught up with the present. His eyes had gone flat with the distance and flow of the stream; or perhaps he was wandering somewhere farther than that, carried down and away where Hannibal could not begin to follow.

He arranged his features into careful concern: lips parted slightly, head cocked just a few degrees, frowning slightly. He reached out to touch the back of Will's hand. "Will, what do you need?"

 _"Don't."_ Will flinched away. "Don't touch me, I'm... Give me a minute."

There was a splitting within him. He saw at once what Hannibal felt juxtaposed with what Hannibal wanted to feel, what Hannibal deemed important to perform. He watched the emotions Hannibal felt collapse in on themselves again and again until he could identify them in the distance, a single infinitely-dense point in a yawning void that did not need to be _felt_ at all. Later he would put them to use, but not now-- he shut off rage like a light switch. For Will’s sake.

He almost regretted what he was about to do.

"I need to leave," he whispered, still looking through Hannibal, through the hull of the ship, not quite seeing anything real.

"You are feeling overwhelmed, naturally," Hannibal observed and sat back. "Sit down, please. We should discuss this before ...taking action."

Will shook his head, his throat constricting in a wash of grounded anger that belonged solely to himself. "No. Don't tell me how I'm feeling-- what could you possibly know about how I'm feeling right now?” It was a barb that wouldn’t stick, he knew, but he had to

"Forgive me, Will, it was not my intent to presume. Would you sit with me before you go? I want to know what's going through your mind."

"Yeah, I got that." Will did sit though, because the first rule of any relationship was communication, right? Except that Hannibal wasn't interested in communicating. The only time Hannibal Lecter had openly communicated with him about something as paltry as his own feelings, Will had ended up holding onto his own intestines for dear life-- because Hannibal had about the same comfort level with vulnerability as a rabid dog might.

A rabid dog, though, Will knew how to deal with. Therein lay the rub. "I need to leave because I need time to myself, Hannibal."

It occurred to Hannibal in a soothing wave of understanding that Will could get plenty of time to himself-- to think, to gain better understanding of his feelings, to be alone, to do whatever it is he seemed to be unable to accomplish in their current state-- hogtied in the storage space below the cabin of their sloop for a few weeks or months. He was by no means a capable sailor without Will's guidance but there was no reason to leave port in the near future.

"Of course, Will. I imagine you have a great deal to suss out about your own boundaries?" He was careful to phrase it as a question.

Will had a sudden flash of clarity, an image of himself bound in the dark, alone and hungry but not forgotten for a second. He closed his eyes, reminded himself that there was no other person in the world was ever going to want to keep him like Hannibal did. He needed to remember that.

"I need to take care of a few things. Discreetly. And I need to think, for a little while. I want this to work, and to make that happen, I'm going to need to go away and sort myself out." Will had to make sure Hannibal couldn't get to Molly. He had to make sure he couldn't get to Molly. He had to make sure he wasn’t just trying on a Hannibal Lecter suit for convenience’s sake.

"Is discretion truly the better part of valor or are you delaying the inevitable?"

He didn’t dignify the implication-- vague and condescending, that he couldn’t control himself, that he would hurt his family-- with a response. "You don't trust me to come back. I guess I haven't really given you a reason to. Y’know, I'd planned to ease you into it, really, get us to South America first. Somewhere we could establish ourselves, and then I could head off to the coast somewhere to fish and think."

Hannibal’s chest cavity seemed to yawn and constrict at once. It was the closest facsimile to pain his brain could conjure. "I suppose I should thank you for thinking to gentle me. What about Molly's grief nullified your patience in that regard?"

Will looked down at the pale line on his finger at where his wedding band had been.

"I have to cut out the parts of me that don't fit anymore." Will told Hannibal instead of trying to figure out just what Hannibal was pushing for. "It's not something you can help me with. Not if I want to be some semblance of myself after."

Will swallowed and Hannibal watched his throat contract. His fingers twitched, the skin of his hand twisting over ligament and bone. The scar on his cheek that had become an anchor point for all of his expressions. Careful observation would be necessary to draw them from memory later.

Hannibal heard himself say, “You must learn and establish your own boundaries; of course it must be done alone. And I encourage you to take whatever time you need to do so.”

His ears rang and his mouth watered.

He could gut Will with the pocket knife Will kept in his jeans. With no less precision than the first time but far less control. Reach up into the sharp arch of Will’s ribs as he collapsed forward, clawing at Hannibal and maybe fighting, reaching to grasp Will’s still-beating heart before panic and pain embittered it— tear it free from aorta and circumflex branch, out from its nest between deflating lungs—

He could eat it raw.

One thick, sweet mouthful at a time.

But he could not imagine any earthly balm for the emptiness that would follow. He could rip Will’s heart out but he could not bring himself to kill him-- just thinking of the sensation had him gasping.

Awareness came back to him in a flood. The sun had set and below deck had grown too cool for comfort. In the dark, he scented Will’s absence; he’d taken the dog with him, too. Hannibal was alone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading once again! We are officially taking a brief hiatus-- tentatively called "murder sabbatical" in our shared google drive-- to make some headway in wrapping up the series. You can expect some more content around or after the holiday season. In the meantime:
> 
>   * Follow [scarebeast](https://twitter.com/SPlRlTGUN) and [iimpavid](https://twitter.com/iimpavid) on twitter for live updates.
>   * Read excerpts of our work on [iimpavid's pillowfort](https://pillowfort.io/iimpavid).
>   * Listen to the transmogrification series [soundtrack](https://youtu.be/gvUg7KLAclA) for hints of great things to come.
> 

> 
> Please, if you're liking the series, if any part of it strikes you, if you dig a particular line or mood or scene, let us know. Your feedback inspires us to write, it's true!


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